Transportation assets can include many different types of equipment, and are generally particular to a specific industry segment. As I mentioned in my earlier blog entry, there are many segments of the Travel & Transportation industry, each their own "industry". Likewise, the assets that support these industries can be common or unique to each. Those who offer asset management solutions typically segment assets by "classes", as each asset class must be managed differently in a enterprise asset management (EAM) system.

The five Asset Classes include Facilities, Fleet, IT, Linear and Production. Facility assets are generally things like buildings, and in an industry segment like Airports can include the landside and airside facilities. Fleet assets can range from cars & trucks to buses, trains, aircraft and vessels. Information Technology (IT) assets can include equipment like servers, network hardware, desktops and telephony. Linear assets include roads, railway, pipeline and cable, and Production assets can range from equipment on a production line to conveyers to power plants.

So, why are these different? Facilities tend to be one of the largest asset classes. When doing facility maintenance you often to work based on time, such as checking an air compressor monthly, or a safety system the first and third Tuesday of each month. Facility assets typically stay on one place, so have a fixed location. Fleet assets often use time and usage to determine preventive maintenance, similar to a personal car that has scheduled inspections every three months or 3,000 miles. These assets do not stay in one place and can be repaired in many different locations. IT assets are often repaired based on service requests, especially desktops and laptops, and can also move around. Linear assets, like a highway, use measurements such as mile or kilometer markers, and are maintained in place. Unlike Fleet or IT assets, Linear assets are not replaced with a new asset but are typically maintained or extended. Production assets are similar to facility assets, but may have much more complex preventive maintenance schedules.

All of these assets have benefited from technology advances. This is the "Smarter Planet" story for Asset Management. Facility assets can have smart security or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems that have monitoring devices that alert the asset management system prior to failure. So, the air compressor on the roof of an office building can send an alert that it is failing and can be repaired before your office gets hot. This type of system is most often called Condition Monitoring. The Condition Monitoring devices can integrate to the asset management solution to send alerts that create service requests or work orders, initiating a repair or early preventive maintenance task. Newer devices can be very small and use the existing WiFi network in the building to communicate an early failure warning.

For Transportation assets this capability can be called Health Monitoring or Telematics. By sending a diagnostic code from the vehicle it allows the garage to know that engine temperature is high or tire pressure is low, and can alert the driver while also letting the dispatcher know so they can route the vehicle to a repair facility. The primary purpose of these same devices is often for dispatching and scheduling of equipment, where the operations or logistics teams to track assets, and reroute when needed, such as skirting traffic delays. The devices communicate over satellite, cellular, radio or WiFi networks providing critical information to both operations and maintenance.

So, how does Smarter Planet help in Transportation? Within asset management if the maintenance team knows of a failure before it occurs then they can get the asset repaired and the operations team can work to reroute passengers or freight if needed. Early information leads to better service, and can also reduce costs associated with in-service failures, often called road calls or incidents. This improved performance will result in lower fuel costs and carbon emissions and can extend the useful life of the assets. For many of IBM's clients this has also led to higher labor utilization, greater understanding of inventory needs and improved asset reliability and availability. Those seem like some pretty smart benefits to me.

I traveled to New Zealand this week to meet with some IBM transportation clients and discuss IBM’s thought leadership in Rail.Coincidently, IBM opened a Global Rail Innovation Center in Beijing, China this week as well, coinciding with my meetings in New Zealand.IBM has issued several documents and press releases on Smarter Rail.If you would like to see those please follow the link in this paragraph.

Over the past several years I have been visiting clients globally and hearing their challenges and share IBM’s vision for improving asset management in transportation.A large portion of these meetings have been with rail clients.There has certainly been an increase for IBM in proposals and tenders in the rail industry segment.Our investments in asset management solutions has helped IBM to be selected by many rail and transit organizations worldwide by aligning with the needs of those clients and showing value, both in software and services, but also in the benefits achieved by existing clients.

For many rail organizations there is a need to manage a wide variety of assets.In some countries, like England and the Netherlands, privatization has led to the separation of asset management of rolling stock from linear assets.Whereas in most countries the rail system must manage all the assets. These assets are: Rolling Stock, which includes locomotives, passenger cars and freight cars; Linear Assets, such as track, signals, bridges, tunnels and power; Facilities, including buildings, stations, depots and other repair facilities; Support Fleet, such as cars, trucks and other specialized equipment for repairs; and IT assets, which can include data centers, network hardware, desktops, laptops, telephony, etc.Whatever the case, the rail system must support a variety of equipment and are focused on providing increased value to their customers.

Because the rolling stock and linear assets are both “revenue generating” assets for a rail system, organizations will typically address these first with an asset management system.However, these assets fall into two different types.Each share some challenges, such as aging workforce, safety, security and regulatory changes, and improving service levels, but in general have different needs.Those managing rolling stock assets are concerned with increasing asset reliability and availability, improving asset performance to reduce the impact of rising fuel costs, recovering warranties on components and parts, optimizing inventory levels and reducing material costs, and capturing accurate data to drive condition based maintenance programs.For the companies or divisions managing linear assets, their challenges include managing aging infrastructure while also supporting growing service demands, managing continuous assets with dynamic segmentation, supporting visual and automated inspection systems and addressing lost revenue due to track occupancy.Those clients I have talked with are seeking systems with out of the box capabilities that address these challenges.

Meeting these challenges was clear in my meetings in New Zealand and will be demonstrated in the Global Rail Innovation Center in Beijing.I have been working with Keith Dierkx, the center’s director, for several years and we share a similar focus on improving asset performance and service delivery through improved asset management.With many countries investing in their rail infrastructure, in some cases with stimulus funding, the ability to provide new innovations that can help upgrade the infrastructure and reduce costs will be critical in providing what we have been calling “Smarter Rail”.I believe this is one of the most important opportunities in a move towards a Smarter Planet.